Save Me, Wonderland
by xXDeathIsAPromiseXx
Summary: My own version of Alice in Wonderland. After the death of her father, Alice Kingsley is left uncaring to the world around her and wishes only to meet again with him. Even if the only way is death.
1. Chapter 1, Insane

Alice reclined in a tall oak tree on the edge of her family's property. Her father, God rest his soul, passed away the month before. Alice had taken his death hard, slipping into a near catatonic state. She had to be fed through a tube in a hospital for a week and would respond to no one.

She gradually came back to her wits, but not fully. "She's distant. Uninvolved. Depressive." Her mother described her as when she took her daughter to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist decided it would be better to have her take leave of her classes for the rest of the school year so she could recover herself and not be a danger to others.

Alice was glad to be rid of Mrs. Harthouse's Girl's Academy for the year. It was such a bore to learn to sew dresses, cook, and learn her arithmetic. She didn't miss a good deal unfortunately, school would have gotten out in a few weeks anyway. It was June, the flowers bloomed early that year.

So here Alice sat in her old oak tree, her back resting against the main trunk and her torso supported in the cavity between where the trunk and a stout old limb came out. Alice sat upon a branch just below that and right behind her right shoulder was a hollow where some creature, perhaps a squirrel, had once nested.

In the hollow Alice put a collection of daisys she had plucked from her mother's garden. Chains were being woven from them. Alice had fashioned herself a crown to grace her blonde hair and she was putting the finishing touches on a bracelet to go with it.

"Alice!" Cried her mother from the herb garden that came off the old cottage's kitchen with the lovely old dutch door. "Alice you get in here right this minute! I heard about what you did to poor Ms. Leane!"

Alice chuckled. Poor Ms. Leane. Leane, a girl of about equal height as Alice but no where near as pretty, was a sour girl of expression who lived in a cottage about 4 miles down the road. Leane had approached Alice yesterday in the flower fields and tried to tell her that her father had been insane.

Alice, enraged, had punched her square in the nose. A distinct crunch-like noise was heard muffled by her fist. Blood streamed down the girl's nose and her eyes widened in shock. Alice's knuckles had even cracked from the impact. An inhuman shriek tore from the girl's lips and she turned tail and ran away back in the general direction of where she came.

The girl deserved it. Alice smoothed over a wrinkle in her light blue victorian dress. Her father was not insane. He was not! He was a genius, no one else in the world was smart enough to recognize it, Alice thought.

They thought him insane because when his best friend came to visit while his wife was out, her father, Charles Kingsley, had taken a fountain pen and gouged it into his friend's eye. He then took a letter opened off his desk and stabbed him repeatedly in the throat.

Her father was found dead on the floor weeping blood. A note in his suit vest pocket said "God may not forgive me, but I regret nothing besides leaving Alice behind."

Cause of his death was unknown. He simply...died. It couldn't have been of old age, he was only in his early 40's.

You may wonder who it was who found Charles Kingsley on the floor. It was his daughter, Alice Kingsley. At the sight of her father and his friend she did not cry and she did not scream. She simply sat in the corner trying to fold in the corners of her being and make herself invisable. Make herself dissapear.

When the scene was stumbled upon by her mother Helen, the authorities were called. It was only then that Alice started screaming. She was pulled away by an officer and brought to her aunt Imogen's house for the night to calm down while arrangements and investigations were made.

The conclusion on the case was that Charles Kingsley had murdered his friend Thomas Baldwinn for reasons unknown. Cause of Charles' death unknown.

For the next two weeks Alice curled up in her father's study on the floor where his body had lay and she slept there. Surrounded by the bookcases full of volumes of encyclopedias and lore she had dreams of a place where she could meet her father. But she awoke knowing the truth, she could only meet him in death.


	2. Chapter 2, The Old Well

"Alice! This is your mother! Come here right this minute, young lady!" Cried her mother once again from the little herb garden. She crossed through the white picket gate and onto the grass. Raising a hand to shade her face from the sun, Helen Kingsley peered toward the tree where Alice usually resided for hours on end. She wasn't there this time, probably ran off at first sign of trouble. Helen shook her head, gathered the skirts of her white dress, and stepped back inside the cottage.

Alice ran through the woods as fast as she could. Tripping over rocks and roots was no possibility for she knew these woods better than the creatures inhabiting it did. She knew far enough back in the woods was an old well. At least a hundred years old. It dried up long ago and was of no use to anyone so they boarded it up long ago. Recently, the boards had mostly rotted away.

Alice panted through her open mouth as she ran through the forest for nearly fifteen minutes. At last however, the well came into view. Made of large old stones with a top of wood to cover it, it looked like a wishing well, but the original bucket was long gone. The shingles on the old roof above were covered in decades-worth of moss.

With her fingernails, Alice pried what remained of the boards off the lip of the well and leaned them against the side next to her. The well rose to about her hip and she leaned unsure over the edge to peer down the stone tunnel to hell.

Looking around the base of the well she located a good sized rock, she had to wrap her whole palm and fingers around it, it must have weighed a pound or two. Leaning over the edge once again she held it arms length out over the middle of the opening and dropped it down to the darkness.

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...

An echoing clack rang out and as the rock hit the unforgiving surface of the bottom. One could probably die if they jumped down there, Alice thought. Pausing, she thought of her father. If she jumped down there and snapped her neck and died, would she see him again? Maybe it was a chance worth taking, there was nothing for her to do in life anyway, no one would miss her.

Alice climbed unsteadily onto the lip of the well.

And jumped.

Alice closed her eyes and let gravity pull her to her death. The air rushed past her face and her hair flowed behind her like a flame when you blow on it. She braced herself for the impact of the ground but it never came.

Her eyes flew open and she saw the well before her seemed to have no end. An eternal blackness pushed out before her. 9 seconds of falling definitely went by. A scream clawed its way out of her throat as she plummeted farther and farther down the hole.

Did this tunnel lead to the very core of the Earth? Would she fall through to the very other side of the Earth? Does the hole lead to hell? These are all questions she asked herself.

Remembering her 16th birthday, Alice recalled how her father had given her a telescope. she had begged him and begged him for months for the darn thing. You can imagine her glee as she opened the box with the beautiful silver telescope. She had received the nautical kind, the kind that folds and inverts itself so it fits in your pocket. The same telescope was hidden in the folds of her dress in a secret pocket for carrying such things.

When you look through a telescope you see the world seemingly forever, places you could never see as far without. This is how she felt as she went deeper and deeper down the hole, she was going farther down and down than she ever though she could.

Alice flinched as she felt something hit her face. 'What was that?' She whispered to herself but the sound was choked away from the rapidly passing air. Once again something hit her. It felt small and hard, but not hard like stones, more like coins.

More and more of these small objects hit her, seemingly as if they were suspended in the air and she was falling on them. Reaching out her hand she tried to catch one. After a few missed she succeeded. She could not see what it was because of the dark but she felt over its familiar surfaces and grooves.

"Why, its a button!" She exclaimed, releasing the button back into the air. "They're all buttons!"

Up ahead Alice saw a light. A flickering light.

_What would a candle be doing down here?_


	3. Chapter 3, The Bottom

The light drew closer and closer as Alice plummeted down the hole. The stone walls gave way to dirt, as if the bottom of the well had been dug out and elongated to forever. The walls were packed dirt and Alice scrambled for a root, a rock, ANYTHING.

The candle light was even bigger now and Alice could see it had not been one light, but many. The light had been so distant they all blended as one. Now, individual lights were distinguishable.

Clawing at the dirt wall, muddying her dress, Alice snagged a root with one arm and nearly tore it out of its socket when she caught it. Alice smacked into the earthy wall with gravity and her elbow make an audible crack as it slammed against the wall. She was sure she had bruised her side from the impact.

Gripping the root with her other arm as well, she dangled limply from it while trying to figure out what to do next, swaying in the air. Looking up, the entrance to the hole was no more than a speck of blue in the far distance, drowned out by the darkness of the hole.

Looking below, she could see about 20 feet down were the candles, they stood still, suspended mid-air. It took Alice a second or two to recognize the formation. "A chandelier? Down here? How extrodanary." She voiced as she squinted down at the lights.

The root suddenly gave way and she found herself plummeting again. Only this time she fell with force to the bottom.

Straight on her back she landed on the cold floor. Yes, floor. I say floor because it was indeed a floor. A checkerboard of tile to be exact, composed of two colors: purple-blue and pink-red. It resembled in hue a certain cup of trix. 'Silly rabbit, trix are for...'

She lay, stunned, the breath knocked out of her, on the floor. But she looked up from wence she came at the chandelier. She now noted that it was of elaborate design, possibly of gold. Maybe brass, couldn't really tell from there.

Getting upright with a huff of determination, Alice surveyed the room. The room was circular, all around her were doors and curtains hung between two of them. The doors looked to be made of old wood with solid brass handles. A small table with a glass top stood slightly off center in the room. On the table was a small bottle and a gold key.

Curiosity aroused, Alice stood up, felt to make sure she wasn't broken or bleeding, and went up to the table. Not a speck of dust lay on it, this place must be visited often, she thought.

Picking up the bottle she noticed a little tag and she took hold of it between her right thumb and index finger and read it. "DRINK ME" it read in bold print letters. Weighing her options, she decided this wasn't poison and unscrewed the cork fastening and took a small sip.

Nothing happened. Or so she thought. Alice's head swam and temporary double-vision took hold and she felt as if she was falling. She took her head in her hands and closed her eyes waiting for the dizzy spell to pass.

After it passed, peeking out from between her fingers, she saw everything was...larger. Or was she smaller? Alice was indeed smaller.

Stepping out our her miles-too-big dress she pulled her shift higher up her chest and reached down for a ribbon from her dress. Wrapping it around her waist, across her chest one way then the other, then around her waist again, she tied it off satisfied it would secure her makeshift clothes.

Looking back to the table once more she saw a small detail she had overlooked. Next to a leg of the table was a small bowl. Crawling on her hands and knees Alice went over to it and picked it up.

Little sweets lay in there pristinely decorated with sprinkles. "EAT ME" was written in a very small gauge frosting. 'Don't mind if do' she said as she put one, whole, into her mouth at once.


End file.
